Does Anyone feel like Bailing

[ZenGum]

: eyes glazing :

FTR, I agree with ... well, not quite 85%, but ... more than half of what TW posts. When I can be bothered to read it all. Learn to edit, bro.

[tw]

Originally Posted by ZenGum

Learn to edit, bro.

Which sentences would you remove?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by tw

Which sentences would you remove?

These...

A benchmark for GM was posted what - more than a decade ago when a majority were in denial? The 70 Horsepower per liter engine. So many disagreed only because they *felt* it was wrong.

... because it's still bullshit.

But you did a good job on the rest of the post.

[ZenGum]

Actually, that post was pretty good, but various refinements in the form of rearranging, rephrasing, signposting... crap, this is what happens to teachers.

Now I have to make myself stay after class and write on the blackboard "I must not edit TW's posts" over and over.

[Undertoad]

Good: Wagoner out

Bad: New guy is a Harvard MBA and was never a "car guy"

[xoxoxoBruce]

As he was already the heir apparent, he's suspect.
And as the current CFO he had to know the the shenanigans were going on.

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

While I'm glad Wagoner is out, it's just a political public perception move on Obama's part. That said, I suppose Obama dictating Wagoner's replacement would have been too much. sigh

[classicman]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

While I'm glad Wagoner is out, it's just a political public perception move on Obama's part. That said, I suppose Obama dictating Wagoner's replacement would have been too much. sigh

What makes you think he didn't? Oh and he is there on an "interim basis." Careful he may get a retention payment at the end of a certain period of time too. (serious)

[TheMercenary]

Those damm Anglo-Saxons!

Mr Sarkozy, who blames the “Anglo-Saxons” for causing the economic crisis, told his ministers last week that he would leave Mr Brown’s summit “if it does not work out”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle6005810.ece

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Good: Wagoner out

Also interesting is what that firing did in GM. Shock. GM management still believed what Wagoner said. First he said GM had no problems other than a bad economy. Then he gets his ass handed back by Congress when he cannot even say how many $billions GM really needs. So he says GM has some problems and he is going to fix it. Well those solutions must be on the scale of closing whole divisions – Pontiac, Hummer, Saturn, Saab, GMC . GM’s attitude is Wagoner's decree - they will simply seek concessions from employees and suppliers. 85% of all problems ….

Finally Obama put into the management, stock holders, bond holders, and BoDs the seriousness of their plight. First he had to remove a person who was optimistic and who foolishly insisted GM had good products. When Obama forced him out, news reports suggested it shocked everyone in GM management back to reality. Good. Their attitude is directly traceable to Wagoner’s decades of lying.

The new guy is only a transition. (More interesting – who will take the Iacocca job?) Even the BoDs need wholesale replacement. GM bonds are now selling for 17 cents on the dollar - $64 billion in outstanding debts - and bond holders still were not demanding change. Under Wagoner, everyone even foolishly believed GM was too big to fail; that bankruptcy was not an option.

Obama gave them time to fix themselves. They did nothing. They pretended GM was OK. 30 years earlier, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter made the situation obvious to Chrysler and Ford who in turn immediately fired their only problems - top management. But the White House for most of the past few years has all but promised protection everywhere. Remember George Jr's protection of anti-American steel companies? The protection of 40% higher prices for prescriptions? Finally Obama has (hopefully) put the fear of economic forces into GM and Chrysler management.

Meanwhile Nardelli is negotiating with Fiat as if he has options. Cerebus Capital (private investors) believed they ‘deserve’ government protection. Under Nardelli, Chrysler does not even have one new product in development. Fiat probably only wants Chrysler dealers anyway. Remember how Iacocca saved Chrysler? K-car. Mini-van. New product after new product because the threat of bankruptcy was galloping right behind Chrysler. Today, neither Wagoner nor Nardelli heard that threat (Ford did). So Nardelli will not even sell off his disaster to Fiat. Instead, both are rich and overpaid men who also believe in corporate welfare from the government.

Hopefully, Obama just sent a message to all American corporations that have been stifling innovation for so long in the name of cost controls, money games, and greater profits. Protection of the rich and anti-innovative has ended. How many heard it today? Finally, someone may have stood up for free market capitalism when it is most necessary.

[sugarpop]

Yea, he sent a message to all corporations tw, except financial ones. So the workers and unions will have to give up more, yet again, while banks keep getting more and more and more money, and the execs are still in place. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad Wagoner is gone, but putting the next in line may not be all that smart, if he's been there a long time.

I'm not feeling the love anymore.

I hope, at this G20 (or whatever it's called), that obscene executive pay is addressed, because there are certainly people there protesting that.

[tw]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

Yea, he sent a message to all corporations tw, except financial ones.

The message of government will protect you did not come from Obama. That was the previous administration. Obama simply gave them (ie GM) time to submit a plan. George Jr never demanded any plans. When GM's plan was an obvious joke (and even the BoDs, stockholders, and bond holders did not complain), then Obama set the new standard.

It has only been two months. He had to give corporate America time to prove they are fixing themselves. Time to do what George Jr never demanded. GM is the first one that had to commit to a restructuring plan (big steel, big pharma, etc never had to). Two months and no plan. Boom. The #1 reason for problems: the top man's head rolls like it was on a guillotine. Hopefully that beheading was violent enough to shake up BoDs everywhere.

Its only been two months and already he has beheaded one of this nation's worst companies. Good. Leadership finally in Washington. "Let the message go out far and wide. Economic forces will now take revenge on those who forget the purpose of a company." Hopefully.

[sugarpop]

Read the article Merc posted in Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...takeover/print

Obama keeps giving more advantages to banks, and big investors, and financial institutions, some of which were responsible for the meltdown in the first place. I think more money should be going to stimulate the economy and help actual people, you know, like more money for infrastructure, more money to refinance homes at low interest rates, less money to banks. Now they are getting another bailout, with most of the risk being put on the taxpayers, with this plan to buy their toxic assets. Meanwhile, they are crushing the very people bailing them out by charging exhorbitant fees and interest rates on things like cars. And the interest rates were supposed to go down on mortgages so people could refinance, but they went up again last week after the stock market went up. It isn't right. They are so worried about recouping the losses that THEY INCURRED by making bad buiness decisions, and while taxpayers keep having to bail them out, they are doing almost nothing to help the very people who are bailing them out.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

Read the article Merc posted in Rolling Stone. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...takeover/print

Obama keeps giving more advantages to banks, and big investors, and financial institutions, some of which were responsible for the meltdown in the first place.

Well why do you think that is?

In the top 20 investors to the Obama campaign we have Securities & Investment, Misc Finance, Commercial Banks, Insurance.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/in...&cid=N00009638

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Well why do you think that is?

In the top 20 investors to the Obama campaign we have Securities & Investment, Misc Finance, Commercial Banks, Insurance.

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/in...&cid=N00009638

And yet Obama proposed sweeping new regulations last week, much to the dislike of those contributors:

The Obama administration's aggressive plan for strict scrutiny of hedge funds and other freewheeling investors, part of the biggest expansion of financial restraints since the Great Depression, is drawing instant opposition from Republican lawmakers and the rules' targets. And skeptics are questioning whether the new rulebook would work anyway.

The administration's proposals, which require congressional approval, include:

_ Imposing tougher standards on financial institutions that are judged to be so big that their failure would threaten the entire system.

_ Extending federal regulation for the first time to all trading in financial derivatives — exotic instruments such as credit default swaps that are blamed for much of the economic carnage.

_ Requiring larger hedge funds and other private pools of capital, including private equity and venture capital funds, to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

_ Creating a regulator to monitor the biggest institutions. Geithner did not say which agency should wield such authority, but the administration is expected to favor the Federal Reserve.

_ Empowering the government to take over major nonbank financial firms such as insurers and hedge funds if deemed necessary.

Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., and many Democrats on the panel backed the proposals, while Republicans assailed them as too far-reaching.

Financial overhaul plan draws GOP opposition

The Republicans, who also got significant contributions from the financial services industry, response?

The same old line whenever regs are proposed...."We dont need new regulations....just enforce the regulations on the books."

They sure didnt do a very good job of enforcing existing regulations between 2000-2006. Bush's last SEC chairman, a former Republican congressman, admitted much like Dodd, that he fucked up.

I dont know if this new regulatory approach is the right way forward. I dont like given more power to the Fed Reserve and I dont doubt there will be loopholes.

Is the better solution simply to enforce existing regs? I dont think so.

But I havent seen a better alternative than the one outlined above.

[sugarpop]

I don't know why we can just put some of the regulations back in place that worked after the Great Depression. Of course we would also need new regulations for some of the new, irresponsible ways financial institutions make money nowadays. Maybe they should just criminalize them.